An Hello from Tropical Guinea Piggies

Hello,
I'm Rachel... Lives in Jakarta, Indonesia (if you don't know maybe I should mention Bali as one of Indonesia's island to ring the bell)
It's a tropical country with temperature around 30 degree of celcius.
and Yes,,, all guinea piggies being bred in here already adapt to the temperature even though they still can't stand direct sunlight.

I've just adopted 1,5 months ago two sows Guinea Pigs from one of the breeder in Jakarta.

This is Chippy (1,5 years old. Female)

and this is Bolluw (6 months female)
she's posing for the Guinea Pig Photo Contest and she's the 2nd winner

------------------------------------
I'm one of the moderators in biggest Guinea Pig forum in Indonesia together with Fridzalone (already member here for a long time)
But just recently join here for supporting my knowledge and sharing about guinea piggies.
All these times I take the information of caring guide from Guinealynx and this site...
I'm very glad for the helpful information and ideas from this site.

Some of the guinea pig owners in Indonesia can't stand the care guide that we apply in the FOrum.
Cage measure, vegetable combination, good pellets, cage separating...
But that's just a few of them... most people in our forrum already follow the standard of Guinea PigCage propperly.

And yes, we are still fighting to achieve the same standard Guinea pig caring for all the owners in Indonesia.
It's hard but our love for them are bigger...

Re: An Hello from Tropical Guinea Piggies

Rachalda:

I just moved to Jakarta (I am American) and we adopted two guinea pigs from a person leaving Indonesia. Their cage is too small, and I want to know where in Jakarta you can get good cages? I am not able to build an "open" cage because we have a cat and are not sure what the cat will do with the piggies when we are not around. When we owned GPs before, we had a huge cage with a plastic bottom in which we used wood shavings, but all the ones i have seen in Jakarta so far have metal grate bottoms, which are horrible for the GPs (but convenient for cleaning poop). For us, those are not an option.

Re: An Hello from Tropical Guinea Piggies

Fridzalone:

I just moved to Jakarta (I am American) and we adopted two guinea pigs from a person leaving Indonesia. Their cage is too small, and I want to know where in Jakarta you can get good cages? I am not able to build an "open" cage because we have a cat and are not sure what the cat will do with the piggies when we are not around. When we owned GPs before, we had a huge cage with a plastic bottom in which we used wood shavings, but all the ones i have seen in Jakarta so far have metal grate bottoms, which are horrible for the GPs (but convenient for cleaning poop). For us, those are not an option.

Re: An Hello from Tropical Guinea Piggies

Hi and welcome. I am always interested in where guinea pigs are popular and why. Do you know any history about guinea pigs in Indonesia, did the Portuguese bring them from South America? I just got to study Java man not too long ago- such an interesting part of the world.

Re: An Hello from Tropical Guinea Piggies

@John : Rachalda is in Jakarta, while I'm in another city. I've told Rachalda about your notes, surely she would be able to help you in finding those that you need for the proper cage. And as you mentioned before about adopted 2 guinea pigs from local owner, I think it would be better if you recheck their sex again to make sure both of your piggies are same sexes.

@Henrysmommy : I believed that guinea pig was carried by Dutch when they came to Indonesia. Indonesian people use word "marmut" to call guinea pigs, and Dutch word for guinea pig is "marmot". I think that's where my conclusion came from. If you are interested to have a long talk about guinea pigs and Indonesian culture, you can send me a message about that. I surely would be glad to reply your message...

Re: An Hello from Tropical Guinea Piggies

First of all, hi to fridzalone and rachalda who are both from Indonesia. I haven't been very active in the forum for a long time now, but I thought I'd delurk to say hi. After all, I do understand the frustrations of being an Indonesian guinea pig owner here in Indonesia.

John, I had no luck finding grids, so I had my cage custom made. I only had the cage frame constructed and built my own coroplast bottom--I used heavy duty coroplast from a sign store, because the ones from the bookstore are thinner and my pigs tend to chew it. The top of the cage was fully lockable and I also made sure the bottom half could be opened and locked as I needed an easy way to slide the coroplast in and out for cleaning (I made a loft). The cost was... about US$60 for the cage frame and the coroplast was about US$10-ish, although this was almost 7 years ago. Shouldn't be too different even now though.

I had the cage made in Pasar Barito and I brought in my own design including exact measurements. If you do it this route, make sure to specify the space between the bars/grids. Because they usually make portable cages for cats/dogs/etc., they might make it too big which is quite dangerous for the piggers...

Anyway, I'm really happy that there are Indonesian guinea pig owners here in the Cavy Cages forum. If you need any help... or if you're looking for supplies, I'll be happy to help.

Re: An Hello from Tropical Guinea Piggies

Nissa:

Thanks for the note and welcome ..... I have not yet gotten the GP's bigger cages because of this problem: we have rescued two GP's in Jakarta whose owners didn't want them any more .... unfortunately, they are a boy (Checkers) and a girl (Chocolate). More unfortunately, I think the girl is now pregnant. We are going to wait for 8-10 weeks to see if she has babies, but after this we are going to either (a) trade one of them to someone in exchange for one of the opposite sex (so we will have two of the same sex, and can then put them in a much bigger cage) or (b) have one of them "fixed".

My question to you is this .... do you know any veterinarians in Jakarta who specialize in rodents / small mammals like GP's and have done the "fixing" surgery? We have a regular vet for our cat, but he specializes in cats/dogs and reptiles.

Re: An Hello from Tropical Guinea Piggies

Hi, John. You don't say whether you're new to guinea pigs in general, or just new to your two. But if it's the former, I just wanted to point out that you need to separate the father from the mom before the babies are born. She can get pregnant again almost immediately (within just a few hours) -- it's called backbreeding -- and it's incredibly hard on the momma pig.

I don't have any info on vets in Jakarta, nor do I know anyone who might except fridzalone, and you're already in contact with her. I hope you can find someone knowledgeable. If you do, please post back here -- we occasionally get posters from Indonesia looking for vets.

Re: An Hello from Tropical Guinea Piggies

Hi again John...
I definitely agree with bpatters, you should separate them immediately. The birth could happen anytime and mostly we didn't even notice it happened. One of my piggy who was accidentally pregnant gave birth just 3 meters away from me-surfing the internet and I didn't even noticed that. So, you can not depends on waiting for the right moment to separate them.

And for the vet, honestly there are no vets in Indonesia that specialized in rodents or small mammals (well, that's what we know until now). But we do know a vet in Jakarta that we always recommended and has good reputation with handling pigs :
Drh Siti Zaenab
Animal Clinic My Vet BSD
Nusa Loka, JL. kalimantan Blok e2 no. 4
Phone : 5384236

However, we always recommend people to always bring hand-outs of guinealynx pages about dangerous medication, disease and symptoms, etc to make sure the vet won't do any mistake, because it's pretty risky-no matter who their vet is. What we know is, a good vet is a vet who is willing to learn (and I guess this reason is not good enough for spaying/neutering)

And honestly, I would not spay or neuter my pig if it's not an emergency. It's totally risky to let vet who doesn't specialized in rodents/small mammals to do big surgery like that. Especially guinea pig, which was a sooo underestimated pet, and just noticed by people in Indonesia since 3-5 years ago (the proper treatment itself just started to known around 3 years ago) . And I'm not even sure if there's any guinea pig owners in here who ever neuter/spay her/his guinea pig. I mean, I was there 3 years ago and I'm still there, and there's no anyone who ever mentioned spaying/neutering their guinea pigs.

My best advice is, trade them or separate them in two different cages. If the babies is born (hopefully sow and boar), you can put the baby boar with the daddy and baby sow with the mommy. And if the babies is only boars or sows, then you probably want to find another piggy to accompany the lonely pig.

I hope my advice would help you...And please post back, we want to hear more about you and your pigs

Re: An Hello from Tropical Guinea Piggies

[Bpatters] We have had Guinea Pigs before .... but this is our first time with them in Indonesia (I am a foreigner here for 2 years). We already have them separate .... they were only together for a few seconds by mistake, but as you know that is all that it takes!

[Fridzalone] I think I will probably take your advice and give away whichever adult we need to and keep a baby in order have either only males or only females. Will keep you posted

Re: An Hello from Tropical Guinea Piggies

Hi all:

@Fridzalone: I've messaged John by email about the cavy savvy doc... but I don't know whether Dr.Siti will reccomend spaying.

@Nissa: btw actually in Indonesia, u can find cheap grid easily... but you have to search really carefully to Pasar Asemka (It's in central Jakarta) almost near Glodok... but it's just too far from my place so I've devcided to use some unique garden fence for my babies... also it makes my house more beautiful...

@suzi: Hi! yes...in Indonesia it's a struggle to get everything for the Guinea Pig even the vegetables menu... but we won't give up...

Re: An Hello from Tropical Guinea Piggies

@John:
Sucks about the mix-up... Let us know how it'll turn out. Hopefully you'll be able to find a good home for him/her if you do decide to rehome one of them. It can be hard to find cavy-savvy pig owners here in Indonesia, but it's definitely not impossible.

Indonesian vets are tricky, but I've heard good things about the vet that both @fridzalone and @Rachalda mentioned. I'm tempted to see her myself, but I live an hour away, in Bogor, and with the traffic one hour can easily become three(!) so I'm not going to put my pig through that unless it's an absolute emergency.

I'm quite happy with my vet; he works at the university veterinary hospital and is also available at the clinic that's only about 10 minutes away from my house. I probably wouldn't trust him with surgery--he's not THAT cavy-savvy--but he always listens to my concerns and had always been attentive to my babies' needs.

Anyway, like @fridzalone said, don't forget to bring print-outs from GL. I've done so and will continue to do so, just as a reminder and to cross-check medications and symptoms.

I really wish you luck!

@Rachalda:
I wish I'd known that six years ago! I practically drove to every ACE Hardware/Clubstore/random furniture stores in Jakarta/Bogor to find grids with no luck. Pasar Asemka is where people usually buy wedding souvenirs and stuff, yes? I'm perfectly happy with my cage set-up, but I always had cage-envy partly because you can customize grids into works of art and partly because of how big you can make them!

And by the way, your cage is gorgeous! Love the (coroplast?) house! I couldn't do an open cage because I have cats--which is why I needed something similar to grids. Ah, if only I could do it all over again.

I echo your sentiment about keeping pigs in Indonesia. Living in Jakarta (or close enough to it) makes it a bit easier. I also make once a week trips for vegs; hay lasts longer. I go often enough that it doesn't have to be specially for vegs, but I can imagine how hard it is for those who live far away and/or doesn't drive.

Just in case others from Indonesia is reading and having problem with vegs:

I've always had success at Kemchicks and Ranch Market for vegs (amazing lettuce selection, even herbs, though it can be a bit pricey) and Sogo Foodhalls, which is a bit more basic but still have common lettuces available. I go to Groovy for Cavy Cuisine (my favorite store; sells no pets and their dogs are part of customer service) but buy my hay from another petshop in Kemang. Sadly the price increased significantly the last time I bought it and have started buying Oxbow hay online from an Indonesian retailer. It costs about Rp200.000 for a huge bag and lasts quite a while.